Acrylon Plastics CEO wants managers to act as owners

Craig McIntosh readily admits that he doesn’t accept no for an answer.

“No just means you haven’t heard me clearly, so let me explain myself to you some more,” says the president and CEO of Acrylon Plastics, a Winnipeg-based manufacturer of custom plastic parts for a wide range of applications including buses, farm equipment, windows and doors, fencing, commercial buildings and residential playgrounds.

McIntosh says his proclivity to positivity is a common trait of entrepreneurs. “That’s just part of our nature. We don’t regard boundaries as absolutes but rather as obstacles to be worked around whereas many others see boundaries as absolutes and are stopped by them.”

Introducing centralized system presents people challenges

Every year, more than 15 million diagnostic tests are ordered from Manitoba’s public sector — and that’s not including an additional eight to 10 million tests conducted in private facilities.

“Eighty-five per cent of all medical decisions are based on some kind of lab or medical imaging result,” says Jim Slater, CEO of Diagnostic Services of Manitoba (DSM), the non-profit corporation responsible for delivering public laboratory and rural diagnostic imaging services supported by over 1,500 professionals at 79 sites.

Lloyd Axworthy, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. (WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS )

The University of Winnipeg is the largest cohort of human activity in the downtown, with 15,000 students, faculty, staff and members of the community engaged on campus.

“There’s a critical mass of people here doing everything from studying to become scientists to putting on performances and attending basketball games. As a centre-of-the-city university, we are an activity hub with an economic impact in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Lloyd Axworthy, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Winnipeg.